Day 359
As of today I am one week shy of having been meatless for an entire year.
For 51 weeks I have eaten no beef, pork, poultry, seafood/fish or whole eggs.
It went by so fast, didn’t it? I am still in disbelief that I stayed meatless for almost a whole calendar year, met my weight loss goal, gained the energy of my youth back and overall changed my health for the better.
Many of you have asked if I am going to quit vegetarianism after November 2nd. My answer to that question has been, “If you were doing something that made you feel great and was good for you with no side effects, why would would you stop doing it?” I will admit, this was initially going to be just a year long experiment, but I just don’t feel the urge to go back to the lethargic way things were before November 2nd of last year.
However, I am wrestling with the idea of going back to eating whole eggs and seafood. One of the factors keeping me from consuming the latter again is the pollutants that some experts claim to have contaminated the fish and seafood—before or after the Gulf oil spill earlier this year.
Of course, there is also the matter of how sea life and egg laying hens are treated. There are more humane ways to get eggs so maybe I will only consume them from free range chickens.
Speaking of poultry, the smell of turkey on Thanksgiving and Christmas is tempting. These are the only times I would ever be tempted to partake in poultry. But should I? Starting my meatless year in November wasn’t an arbitrary decision. I started that particular month as to get the hardest part of being meatless, the holidays, out of the way within the first two months.
There is the social aspect to consider as well. Over the course of the past year I have also received funny looks from people when I ask if a dish is meat free—so imagine how it would look to others refusing turkey on the holiday in front of a friend’s family or my own. If I just eat turkey on the holidays would it make me a bad person? Would it make me a hypocrite?
What do you all think?
One week to go.
Talk to you soon!
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